SOUTH ROYALTON — With feet firmly planted and hands tucked in his pockets, Doug Heavisides waited patiently outside his classroom door on the first day of school at White River Valley High School.
He watched the students passing through the hallway, scanning around for a “Hello,” a “How are you?” or a simple head nod.
But these connections would need some time, as that Wednesday was also Heavisides’ first day in class, following 14 years as an administrator — first at the Hartford Area Career and Technology Center and then the Wilder School.
In his 33rd year in education, Heavisides — or “H,” as his students, colleagues, friends and family call him — has returned as the guiding hand of an English classroom.
Heavisides, who struggled in his own educational upbringing, has devoted his career to including those who’ve been put to the side.
But as an administrator, he began to feel separated from his purpose as an educator.
“I really just missed the kids,” Heavisides said. “I missed that minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour interaction,” he said. As a principal, he was lucky to stick his head into a classroom for five minutes, he said.
“I want to be in this environment,” Heavisides said in his classroom — filled with leafy plants, sand-potted cacti and quotes from writers such as Toni Morrison and Kazuo Ishiguro. “I want to be a part of this.”
‘I want to do this’
The son of a longtime nurse and a yarn shop owner, Heavisides began his educational odyssey at Quechee Elementary School in 1977, a building that is now home to the Upper Valley Waldorf School, and graduated from Hartford High in 1989.
Heavisides’ was brought up in the model of “Teddy Roosevelt rugged individualism,” where one deals with problems alone — no emotions, and no room for collaboration.
And the classroom was an extension of this model.
“The teacher was the authority,” he said. “And the kids did what they were told, when they were told, and how they were supposed to do it.”
In this kind of classroom, Heavisides could be too much to manage.
“I was a handful,” he said. “And the handfulness came when somebody tried to exert authority over me that I didn’t have respect for.”
Still, he “found peace” in reading and writing.
Nevertheless, Heavisides had no intention of teaching English until his senior year at St. Michael’s College, in Colchester, Vt., when he found it helpful to be able to live at home while student teaching at his alma mater.
Teaching was love at first bell.
“I remember my first 20 minutes when it was my turn to lead a lesson,” Heavisides said. “I just felt the most at peace and the most centered I had felt in a long time.”
“And I was like, I want to do this,” he said.
A classroom presence
In the fall of 1993, he was hired as a full-time teacher at Hartford High School.
Throughout his 15 years teaching English at Hartford — where he also coached hockey, baseball and football (and ran a bike shop) — students remember him as heartfelt, engaging and fun.
Katie Washburn, of Bethel, who had Heavisides for English for her sophomore year in 2001, remembers how Heavisides responded in class after the 9/11 attacks.
“Just the presence he gave all of us was, ‘It’s going to be okay,’ ” she said.
Washburn remembers him giving space to students, saying, “We’re not even going to carry on with our class today, but we can talk about anything you want. We can put the news on.”
“That’s just how he always was as a person,” Washburn said. “Like, if a student was having a bad day, he’d take the time to figure out why and try to help them.”
Although he conveyed deep compassion for his students, it took time for Heavisides to become the teacher he wanted to be.
“When I first started teaching, it was really kind of that old school mentality,” Heavisides said. He was in front of the room, entertaining a captive audience.
He recalled his mentor Bob Hagan, a former Hartford English teacher currently retired in Thetford, challenging him early on, telling him, “ ‘Dougie, that was a great, great class. You’re a great entertainer. I’m wondering what exactly the kids are learning though.’ ”
Heavisides especially saw the failure of the old school mentality after suspending a student for skipping school: “I just realized the absurdity of that situation,” he said.
But the fullness of that realization came when Heavisides switched to the tech center.
Meeting students where they are
He accepted the position of foundation skills coordinator at the Hartford Area Career and Technology Center in 2008 because he was “naturally drawn to the students that learned in a kind of a different way.”
The tech center is a vocational school that draws students from around the district. They can earn credit, for example, learning chainsaw operation or specialty dessert preparation.
And though he had never wanted to be an administrator, Heavisides felt he “could lead in this environment” upon seeing how the tech center includes so many types of learners. He served as the center’s director from 2011 to 2020.
He found he was drawn to the students who struggled even in the alternative environment — those for whom the traditional model was “torture,” he said.
“The common theme was that they just had a lot of trauma,” he said. “But the only language that they had was their behavior.”
When kids were verbally or physically aggressive or would blow off school, Heavisides knew that “what they were trying to communicate was that they were hurting,” he said. “And they wanted somebody to share in that hurt with them.”
So, instead of fighting aggression with aggression, as the old school model of education would have it, he saw that his best action was to be present, empathetic and dependable.
“Of all the things with kids that have experienced trauma, the thing that really helps kids heal is having relationships with reliable, dependable adults over the course of time,” Heavisides said.
Instead of eliminating them from the situation, punishing them for their behavior, Heavisides gave students a sense of understanding and belonging.
This made Heavisides the perfect match for the Wilder School, which was trying to change to a more inclusive and “neuro-affirming” model, he said.
The “ambitious” model of neuro-affirming education supports and includes the “normal variation of students’ needs and strengths” — in contrast to one-size-fits-all teaching aimed at “a particular profile of students” that excludes those who don’t fit, according to Page Tompkins, president of the Upper Valley Educators Institute.
Heavisides took the position to provide his best care to the students struggling the most.
At The Wilder School, the autism program and the alternative program for students with “severe behavioral disabilities” had been separate since they began in the mid-1990s, Heavisides said.
The programs came together to share resources and unify their educational models, he said.
Working alongside Heavisides on Hartford’s administrative council, Caty Sutton, who’s the current superintendent of the Hartford School District, said she felt instantly welcomed by Heavisides. She also noticed the positive impact Heavisides had on the school.
“It was all about, you know, really meeting the needs of the students where they are,” Sutton said.
‘Losing touch with my purpose’
However, the sheer volume and intensity of the work was a strain. Heavisides often showed up to work at 6 a.m. and stayed until at least 5:30 p.m.
“It was not uncommon when I was the principal at the Wilder School, (or) the tech center, to get between 120 and 140 emails a day, and 10 to 12 voicemails, and about 15 to 20 text messages,” Heavisides said.
As a teacher, he now has fewer than 10 emails lying in his inbox nightly.
Another admin-to-teacher just down the hall from Heavisides said she also felt overworked as an administrator. Felicia Allard is now on her second year teaching art again.
Allard met Heavisides at the tech center, where she was a digital art teacher for 12 years. “I think a lot of my leadership traits I learned from him,” she said. Among these are humility, shared responsibility, a growth mindset, a sense of humor and that respect is given not earned, Allard said.
Allard was more recently principal for three years at Randolph Technical Career Center, in her hometown, where “there was always stuff left undone,” she said.
“I never felt like enough,” Allard said.
But if she did decide to do the job to its full extent, she “wouldn’t ever see my husband or my children.”
Despite this, there hasn’t been any noticeable trend in administrators going into teaching, said Darren Allen, a spokesperson for the Vermont-National Education Association.
The average pay for Vermont teachers is $64,000, while most administrators make $100,000 or more, Allen said.
One of the largest strains on Heavisides was his role as crisis manager, especially at a school for students with “severe behavioral disabilities” and autism, as the school’s website says.
He had to take on this role to keep the students safe from themselves and others, he said.
But instead of contributing to a place of belonging for students, the role often put him at odds with them, sometimes physically.
“I felt like I was really kind of losing touch with my purpose as an educator,” Heavisides said.
He sustained two concussions in his four years at Wilder.
Toward the end of his time as a principal, Heavisides said he felt that the role “required more than I could give emotionally and spiritually, and more than my skill set and experience could provide while keeping myself balanced, grounded, and healthy.”
Return to the classroom
“The minute” Katie Washburn heard that Heavisides, her former teacher, was returning to teaching where her son, Austin, is enrolled, she felt “immediate excitement.”
A sophomore this year, Austin has Heavisides for American Literature. So far, he’s felt uniquely engaged in the first days of class.
He’s looking forward to the rest of the year. “I think it’s going to be a fun class,” Austin said.
Alongside the excitement, Heavisides has also been worried about his return to the classroom, he said. But he’s found comfort with “adults in the building (who) sincerely and genuinely care about the students and their learning and growth.”
After years as a crisis manager, Heavisides has set up his classroom as a place of healing.
“I want the energy to be happy, but to be fun and energetic, and sporadic and surprising and a delightful way — but not in a crisis way, not in an emergency way.”
He finds this as the major difference between his work as an administrator and his current teaching gig.
“When I leave here, you know, the day wasn’t filled with crises and emergencies, or tremendously difficult problems to sort through,” he said. “It is trying to create a safe environment for kids to learn.”
Within his first few days of teaching, Heavisides had already started exchanging “Hello”s with passing students.
A few even stopped by to check in with him.
One of these stoppers-by, Arhaea Lowe, a sophomore from South Royalton, said she feels a sense of openness with Heavisides, and that he brings much needed humor into the school.
After some students were picking on her for her name, Heavisides told the class that her name was unique and that she should “own it,” she said.
This gave her trust in Heavisides. “Nobody’s ever said that about my name before,” she said.
